Freddie had been in the kitchen all the morning watching the various operations for the Thanksgiving dinner which was "to come off" the next day, when all the "sisters, cousins, and aunts" of the family were to assemble, as was their custom each year, and great was the commotion in the kitchen and much there was for Master Fred to inspect. When Ellen put her hand into the turkey to arrange him for the stuffing, great was her astonishment at finding a piece of paper. Drawing it quickly out she called, "Freddie, Freddie, see here! See what I've found in the turkey! I declare if he isn't a new kind of a postman, for sure as you're born this is a letter, come from somewhere, in the turkey. My! who ever heard of such a thing?"
Freddie, standing with eyes and mouth wide open, finally said, "Why, Ellen, do you believe it is a letter?"
"Why, of course it is! Don't you see it's in a' envelope and all sealed and everything?"
"Yes, but it hasn't any stamp and how could a turkey bring it—how did it get in him?"
"Oh," laughed Ellen, "that's the question! You'd better take it right up to your mother and get her to read it to you and perhaps it will tell."
So Freddie, all excitement, rushed upstairs and into his mother's room, shouting as we have read.
His mother took the letter from him. "Where did you get this, Freddie—what do you mean by finding it in the turkey?"
"Why, Ellen found it in the turkey when she was fixing him, and I don't see how it got there."
Mrs. Page turned the envelope and slowly read, "To the lady who buys this turkey," written with a pencil and in rather crooked letters on the outside; then opening the envelope she found, surely enough, a letter within, also written in pencil, in rather uncertain letters, some large, some quite small, some on the line, others above or below, but all bearing sufficient relation to one another for her finally to decipher the following:
Nov. 20,